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VERMONT 



The 
Green Mountain State 



PAST 

PRESENT 

PROSPECTIVE 



Compiled by 
FRANK L. GREENE 



PUBLISHED BY THE 

Vermont Commission to the 

Jamestown Tercentennial Exposition 

1907 



'■t. AlbititH Mt'Uhfttfft t- ( tiiiipiiuv I riiir 






VERMONT COMMISSION 



JAMESTOWN TERCENTENNIAL EXPOSITION 



Gov. Fletcher D. Proctor, 

Proctor 



Fred. L. Davis, Pomfret 
Charles S. Forbes, St. Albans 
Lieut. Gov. George H. Prouty, Edgar O. Silver, Derby 

Newport Edward M. Goddard, Montpelier 
J. Forrest Manning, Rutland James E. Pollard, Chester 




President, {ex-officio) Fletcher D. Proctor 
Chairman, George H. Prouty Secretary, Charles S. Forbes 



printing and publicity committee: 

Charles S. Forbes Edward M. Goddard 

Edgar O. Silver 



D. OF D. 
FEB 181908 



FOREWORD 



THIS little book aims to tell in a simple and unpre- 
tentious manner the most important of practical 
everyday things that people unacquainted with 
Vermont would naturally like to know about the state 
and its inhabitants — what they have done, what they 
are doing, and what they can do to entitle them to an 
honorable place in the mighty family of progressive 
commonwealths that in this great Exposition is aus- 
piciously commemorating a momentous event in its 
origin. 

There is much more to the same end that might be 
written: details of glorious achievement in war; of 
signal accomplishment in the evolution of free govern- 
ment, of landmarks set and passed in the development 
of social culture ; and of steady growth in substantial 
material prosperity that has been born of the sturdy 
character, keen intelligence, and steadfast industry of 
a patriotic, high-minded, home-loving people. 

But this book has been prepared to serve the im- 
mediate purpose of the busy man of affairs and not to 
gratify the quest of the student. It will be found to 
avoid statistics and comparisons and simply to indicate 
present day conditions in a more or less easily readable 
generalization. And thus devoted to the mere hasty 
suggestion of a wealth of social advantages and business 
opportunities beyond the power of the printed page 
adequately to convey to the inquiring mind, It must be 
supplemented by the hearty invitation of the whole 
people of Vermont to all their kinsmen and fellow 
citizens in the land to come to the old Green Mountain 
state, partake of the hospitality it will be their delight 
to extend, and see for themselves that all that is told 
here, and more than volumes else can tell, is true. 



History 



OXLV two years after the Jamestown Settlement (1607) 
eommemorated by this s]:)lendicl Exposition and in the 
same vear that Henry lludson in the clumsy old Dutch 
ship "Half ^loon" sailed up the river that was named for him, 
Samuel de Chami^lain, the ^reat French navi,^ator, piloted by 
Indians in a birch-hark canoe, discovered the majestic lake that 
bears his name, (July 4, i6oq), being- the first white man to look 
upon the reo'ion now known as \'ermont. 

For some time thereafter the natural logic of events or the 
caprice of historic circumstance might have made this region 
French. Now all that is French about it is its name, and that 
was given to it by the English. And, strangely enough, its very 
French name, "\'erd Mont", "green mountain", is a contradic- 
tion of the testimony of the discoverer himself who writes in the 
account of his memorable voyage, "Continuing our route along 
the west side of the lake, contemplating the country, I saw on the 
east side very high mountains, capped with snow." Vermont's 
mountains are not high enough to reach the perpetual snow line, 
and, as the distinguished Frenchman saw them on this occasion 
on the day that was long afterward to become memorable in 
American history as the Fourth of July, there has been more or 
less puzzling among historians to decide just what Champlain 
actually saw on the mountains that gave him the impression they 
were covered with snow. For Green Mountains they are, if ever 
mountains were green, and the most refreshing verdure, too, 
that ever rested mortal eyes. 

In Pioneering Days. — Vermont was the last of the New 
England states to be settled by the English colonists. Even 
while settlements had sprung up all along the coast and had 
begun to make their way toward the interior, the territory now 
known as Vermont was regarded by the English as a terra incog- 
nita, a dense and forbidding forest wilderness stretching far oflf 
to the northward, its mountain fastnesses inhabited otdy by wild 



The Crccii Mountain State. 7 

beasts, and the whole region, lying between the haunts of the 
Iroquois Indians on the one hand and the Algonquin tribes on 
the other, a prized and coveted hunting-ground jealously fought 
for by both and permanently inhabited by neither. In later years, 
when the warfare of centuries between the English and the 
French in the Old W^orld was renewed in the New and what 




Approach to Montpelier. 



proved to be a long desperate struggle for the possession of a 
great continent was under way, Vermont's lakes, rivers, and moun- 
tain passes became the high\va\s along which the soldiers of the 
French king and their savage allies made their way down from 
Canada to the straggling English settlements below^ on many a 
frightful raid and massacre. And hack again over the same 
courses the plucky English ])ursued the retiring foe. to rescue 



The Civccii Mountain State. g 

captives and to wreak righteous vengeance,, often grappling with 
them in fierce woodsman's combat that made the Green Mountain 
region a dark and bloody ground, indeed, and the theatre of some 
of the most tragic and most rudely romantic events in the 
pioneering days of the American people. 

A Record of Glory. — But it is not the object of this 
little book to give even a sketch of the glorious history of this 
glorious old commonwealth. It would have to deal with a variety 
of incident and an importance of purpose and achievement that 
could not even be satisfactorily hinted at in such abbreviated 
form. It would have to begin with the pioneering days and their 
lessons of courage, enterprise, fortitude, and valor ; and then tell 
how greedy neighbors tried to dispossess the plucky \'ermonters 
of the pleasant lands they had redeemed from the wilderness and 
the savages and how for many a long year Ethan Allen and the 
Green ^fountain Boys successfully resisted the attempts of the rich 
and powerful royalist government of New York to govern them 
against their will, and wrote a chapter of tingling romance unex- 
celled, and in but few instances equalled, in the history of America. 
It would tell how in the Westminster massacre of March 13, 1775. 
what was in fact the first blood shed in the Revolution was spilled 
upon the soil of Vermont, and how in the capture of grim old 
Fort Ticonderoga one ]\Iay morning bright and early Vermonters 
not only wrested from proud old England a great military 
stronghold but captured the first British colors to be surrendered 
to Yankee Doodle in the glorious War for Independence. It 
would tell how. beset on the one hand by New York that still 
claimed jurisdiction over their territory and attempted to enforce 
it. and on the other by Great Britain and her armies of red coats 
and redskins, and all the while denied recognition or help in 
defence b}- the Continental Congress, the plucky little band of 
Green Mountain Boys declared the independence of the state of 
\'ermont. January 16, 1777. and then later in the >ear adopted 
a constitution containing the first prohibition of slavery made 
on this continent. Then they set up a little republic that there- 
after for fourteen years maintained itself against all the world, 
in war and in peace, as a sovereign state, making and administer- 
ing its own laws, establishing post-roads and post-ofifices, coining 
its own money, negotiating trade arrangements with foreign 




The Monarch of Green Mountain Elms, Feacliani. 



The Green Mouittaiu State. 1 1 

states, and contributing one of the most uniciuc and brilliant 
chapters to American history. It would tell how the faithful 
Vermonters. still stubbornly denied all official recognition by the 
Continental Congress and driven to this expedient of an in- 
dependent government for self-preservation, nevertheless con- 
tinued to fight for the cause of liberty and to bear signal part in 
such glorious achievements as the battle of Bennington and the 
repulse of Burgoyne's expedition. For that matter, Burgoyne's 
own words in the language of a private letter best tell how the 
British themselves at the time regarded the part \'ermonters were 
playing in the desperate conflict : "The Hampshire Grants in 
particular, a country unpeopled and almost unknown in the last 
war, now abounds in the most active and most rebellious race on 
the continent, and hangs like a gathering storm on my left." It 
would tell how the diplomac\- of the far-seeing and sagacious 
statesmen of this little mountain republic kept a British army in 
idleness on the Canadian frontier for months and months and thus 
prevented another great invasion of the colonies from the north- 
ward that threatened disaster to the cause. Then it would tell 
how after liberty had been won, \'ermont went peaceably about 
the task of building up her state, all the while maintaining its 
independence and waxing thrifty and proud, until on the 4th da> 
of March, 1791, the reconstructed Congress admitted \'ermont to 
the Union of states, the first child born to the Old Thirteen. And 
when a sketch had reached even this point, the outline of the his- 
tory of \'ermont would only be begun. Then would follow the stor\ 
of \'ermont's part in the war of 1812 and the great victory on 
land and water at Plattsburg ; her part in the war with Mexico : 
her part in the war for the preservation of the Union to which 
she gave ten men out of every hundred of her population, suffered 
a higher percentage of men killed in action than any other state, 
and never surrendered a flag in battle ; and the war with Spain 
in which again this little commonwealth gave to the countrv a 
regiment of soldiers when her quota was only a battalidn. and 
enriched the annals of the nation l)y the exploits of two such' 
vikings as Dewxy and Clark, beside. 

The Victories of Peace. — -^nd this is only llie melan- 
choly tale of war. All along down through decade after decade 
of peace the story would have to tell of "victories no less re- 



12 



The Crccn Mountain State 



nowned than war"', of remarkable inventions and discoveries of 
scientists and mechanics, of distinguished hterary accomphshment. 
of sagacity and progress in statecraft, of practical achievement in 
the art of husbandry, of steady development of manufacturing 
and industrial life, of a broadening of the public educational field 
and scope, the uplift of social culture, and the development of a 




Ci>nnectKiit River Above Brattleboro. 



people whose character and institutions have made them worthy 
their honored place among the sons and daughters of Columbia. 
This little book must forego all the delig^ht of such a recital 
and confine itself to the suggestions of social and business promise 
that grow out of the \'ermont of to-day. 



The Green Mountain State. 13 



A Few Words of Description 



Vermont, one of the New England states, is bounded on the 
north by tlie Dominion of Canada, on the east by New Hamp- 
shire, on the south by Massachusetts, and on the west by New 
York. The eastern boundary Hne of \ermont is the Connecticut 
river, while the greater extent of the western boundary line passes 
through Lake Champlain. including within the state the major 
portion of its waters and nearly all the beautiful islands that lie 
therein. Its greatest length, north and south, is about 160 miles, 
its width on the northern boundar\- 90 miles and on the southern 
boundary about 40 miles, with an average width of 57^ miles. Its 
area is between 9,000 and 10.000 square miles. The famous Green 
Mountain range runs north and south, approximately in the 
middle of the state, dividing near the center to form something 
like the two upper arms of a Y. These with their numerous 
foot hills and the Taconic range of mountains in the south- 
western part of the state give an undulating character to the 
country, sloping down to the level of the Champlain valley on the 
west and the Connecticut River valley on the east. Lake Cham- 
plain is about 90 feet above the sea, while the highest peak of the 
Green Mountains. Mansfield's "Chin" is 4..^) ^^'^'t above sea 
level. Several hundred lakes and ponds and hundreds of rivers 
and streams make their beds and courses among these hills and 
valleys, some draining to the Connecticut river, some to the 
Hudson, and others to Lake Champlain and the St. Lawrence 
river, the waters of all ultimately reaching the Atlantic ocean. 

The climate is that of the north temperate zone, modified !)> 
local conditions to form perhaps the most salubrious of all the New 
England states. The mean annual temperature ranges from 40 
to 47 degrees, the highest from 90 to 100, and the lowest from 30 
to 45 degrees below zero, while the rainfall averages between 30 
and 45 inches per annum. The winters, while occasionally pro- 
longed, are by no means as severe as is popularly believed by 
outsiders and the wild storms and fierce blizzards that are charac- 
teristic of many more populous parts of the country are wholly 
unknown in \'ermont. 



14 



TJic Green Mountain State. 



The population of Vermont, according to the census of 1900, 
was 343,641. These figures show a gain of 11,219 c>r 1.6 per 
cent, over the census of 1890, but as the census of 1900 was taken 
shortly after the opening of a healthy revival of industrial, trade, 
and social interests that has steadily progressed ever since, there 
is every reason to believe that the census of 1910 will show the 
most substantial increase in population the state has experienced 
since 1820. 




Connecticut River North of Bellows Falls. 



There are six incorporated cities and 240 towns in the state, 
ranging in population from about 20,000 to a few hamlets of less 
than 100. The average villages are snug little communities of 
from two to three and four thousand inhabitants with a high 
degree of material prosperity, modern public institutions, and 
elevated social culture. 



The Greetu Mountain State. 15 

Social Economy 



Municipal and Rural Improvement.— Vermont en- 
joys in its original healthy state the good old town meeting 
system of local self-government inherited from the New England 
Fathers. Only six of her communities are organized under a 
citv government and none of these is large enoug'h to permit the 
government to hecome corrupt because of the distance from the 
voters to the public servants. Indeed, it is one of the great 
elements of strength in all phases of \'ermont public policy that 
the people live next door to their government and governors and 
thus have an intimate acquaintance with both that does not fail 
to make for civic righteousness. Public opinion means something 
in Vermont because it is based, for the most part, upon a 
peculiarly first-hand knowledge of the details of the issues in- 
volved and a very wide personal acquaintance with public men 
on the part of the body of the citizenship. 

Few of the unsavory problems that vex the government in 
more populous centers have to be dealt with by Vemiont munici- 
palities. The exceptions to the law-abiding element in any com- 
munity are literally individual and the matter of adequate police 
protection is, therefore, one of the least of public concerns. 

All the cities and larger villages have modern utilities in the 
form of wa.ter supply, sewerage systems, and street lighting, and 
the smaller communities are fast coming into line. Ample fire 
protection in the larger places is assured by up-to-date facilities 
and paid fire departments. 

The good roads problem, made particularly serious by the 
grades of a hill country and the frosts of winter, is nevertheless 
being met in each succeeding year by a constantly accelerating 
movement for the best highways that available skill and money 
can make to suit conditions, and there has been much improve- 
ment in this respect in the past few years. Streets in cities and 
villages are generally serviceable and in many instances the very 
best. The state is now working for the first season under a law 
even more generous in its provisions and progressive in its policy 



The Green Mountain State. 17 

than any similar statute heretofore in force in \"ermont and the 
idea is fast developing among- the people that the rural highway 
problem is one of the most seriously pressing demands upon the 
public thought. Even under existing conditions, however, Ver- 
mont roads are vastly superior to those in many larger and 
wealthier states and afford safe and generally comfortable and 
convenient highways for transportation and travel by horse and 
automobile. 

Social Betterment.— There is comparatively little demand 
in \ermont communities for social betterment movements con- 
templating such works as improved housing conditions for the 
working classes, social settlements, etc. \'ermont's laborers, as 
a general thing, have comfortable homes in a healthy physical 
and moral environment, and the characteristic evils of tenement 
districts are practically unknown in the state. Humane socie- 
ties are alert and active in all the larger communities, but their 
efforts are mainly directed to the prevention of cruelty to animals, 
and there is comparative!}- little call for their interference in 
behalf of human beings. 

Charities and Corrections.— The state has for many 
years made generous j^rovision from the public treasury for the 
care and education of blind children and deaf mutes in some ot 
the most successful institutions devoted to this work in the 
country. It also nianitains at X'ergennes what is known as the 
State Industrial School to which children of the age of under- 
standing that are deficient in moral nature or opportunities for 
moral culture may be sent during the continuance of their minor- 
ity, being taught some useful craft or trade and given practical 
instruction in elementary education and ethics. 

The care of the poor under Vermont law devolves upon the 
town where they have legal residence. Some cities and towns main- 
tain their own almshouse ; others combine in groups for the main- 
tenance of a common almshouse ; and it is needless to suggest 
that, under such a localized system at work in a comparatively 
small population, it is practically impossible for cases deserving 
charitable aid to pass unnoticed and unhelped. Some of the 
larger communities have w'ell appointed public hospitals that 
minister to the surroundinsr territorv and that also furnish free 



i8 



The Green Mountain State. 



beds for the needy at the expense, in some instances, of the town 
or of some reUgious or secular society. 

The state provides for the keeping of the insane at the Vermont 
State Hospital for the Insane at Waterbury, a group of modern 
buildings combining in their structure and equipment the very 
latest facilities for the merciful care and effective restraint of 
these unfortunates. Beside this there is one large institution for 




Kqumox Mouniiiin. 



the care of the insane long established in wide public confidence 
where state patients were kept until the Waterbury asylum was 
built. There are also several other private sanatoriums, engaged 
in the care and treatment of all classes of mental troubles. 

Vermont maintains two distinctive penal institutions, a State 
Prison at Windsor and a House of Correction at Rutland. In 
both of these the discipline is based upon modern ideas of 
penology, the hideously degrading parti-colored dress of the 



The Green Mountain State. 19 

convict is being gradually discarded for a neat uniform for merit 
men, the lock step has been abolished, and numerous other wise 
moves in the direction of penal reform have been or are being 
brought about. 

Kconomic. — \'ermont has no bonded debt except a small 
loan held by a state institution for its benefit, and levies no 
state tax, the government being supported by a tax on corpora- 
tions, collateral inheritances, etc. Its public finances have long 
been prudently and sagaciously administered and its financial 
condition to-day is vastly superior in point of liabilities, assets, 
and credit to many of the most pretentious states of the Union, 

A state commission appointed by the governor under an act 
of the legislature of 1906 is now studying the subject of taxation 
with the view to submitting propositions for a new law to the 
legislature of 1908. 

Provident Institutions. — There are 45 savings banks in 
Vermont with an aggregate of deposits of $52,087,699.08, an in- 
crease of $2,717,791.40 over the total for the preceding year. 
The rate of interest paid on deposits averages 3I per cent. Nearly 
half the residents of Vermont are depositors in the savings banks. 
An act passed by the legislature of 1906 practically removes the 
limit on the amount of money that may be deposited in such 
institutions in Vermont without being subject to local taxation. 
The banks themselves pay a state tax on such deposits of seven- 
tenths of one per cent. 

There are 50 national banks in the state with an aggregate 
of $5,725,000 capital. 

One of the most conspicuously sound and successful of the 
principal life insurance companies in the country is a Vermont 
institution, originated by Vermonters and conducted by Ver- 
monters from small beginnings in 1854 to its present great im- 
portance. \^ermont is also the home of several well known and 
successful mutual fire insurance companies that have done a 
steadily increasing business for many years, one of them since 
1828, and that are reckoned among the standby financial institu- 
tions of Northern New England. It may be interesting to recall 
in this connection that the modern plan of mutual fire insurance 
now generally followed by mutual companies throughout the 



The Green Mountain State. 21 

United States was devised hy X'crmoiiters and first put into 
operation in this state. 

The rapid increase of the industrial and commercial life 
of the state is resulting in the establishment of other similarly 
useful financial institutions which, under the rigid scrutiny of the 
state law, are sound and reliable, and a great convenience in the 
modern methods of doing business. 

Regulation of Industry and Labor.— Labor problems 
in \'ermont are by no means such disturbing factors in the eco- 
nomic life of its people as they are in far too many other states, 
and this, too. notwithstanding the significant fact that the census of 
1900 showed that the manufacturing interests had doubled in the 
preceding decade and the special United States census of 1905 
indicated an increase under way that may even promise to show 
greater results in 1910. The state is fast developing an indus- 
trial life apart from agriculture and kindred pursuits that is 
beginning to revolutionize many phases of its material concerns, 
but all this is being accomplished, for the most part, with the 
maintenance of generally cordial relations between capital and 
labor. While trades unionism has largely established itself in 
control of the labor market in the busiest industrial centers, 
trades unionism in its most radical and exacting form is not 
manifest throughout the state at large. Many of the more im- 
portant crafts and trades under the influence of trades unionism 
are working under reciprocal agreements with employers to the 
general satisfaction of both parties and the ill efifects of the 
persistent disturbance of these relations through the efforts of 
radicals and agitators in the ranks of labor or obstinate and tyran- 
nizing employers in the ranks of capital are well nigh unknown in 
the state. The workmen, as a class, receive good pay, have 
comfortable homes, and enjoy social advantages far in excess of 
the opportunities of labor in the more populous districts, while 
in their political estate as citizens they are freely and cordially 
conceded an equality with their fellows that makes the distinc- 
tively labor issue practically an unknown factor in Vermont 
politics. The state has a child labor law that has been pro- 
nounced by President Samuel Gompers of the American Federa- 
tion of Labor to be the best of its kind in the L^nited States. 
Another law provides for the weekly payment of wages by corpo- 



22 



The Green Mountain State. 



rations. One of the decided and pre-eminent advantages of the 
development of the industrial and business resources of this state 
now so actively going forward is the general contentment and 
thrift of the working classes and the high standard of intelligence, 
capability, and morals that obtains among them. 

Hygiene. — The general administration of sanitary laws 
and the guardianship of public health is vested in a state board of 




Sunset on Lake Chainplain. 

health established in 1886 and conspicuous as being among the 
most efficient of similar institutions in the country. The sanitary 
legislation of the state is thoroughly modern in every particular, 
even to the point of prohibiting spitting upon sidewalks, in pub- 
lic buildings, and public conveyances, and is rigidly enforced. 
Each city or town has a local health officer appointed by the state 
board and acting under its direction, and once a year a state 
school of these health officers is held at some central point lasting 
about a week. Attendance is compulsory and the expense of at- 



The Green Mountain State. 23 

tendance is defrayed out of the state treasury. The death rate 
in Vennont is one of the lowest in the country, being only 15 in 
1,000. The state maintains one of the best equipped laboratories 
of hygiene in the United States, for the free public service, and 
this institution is particularly useful in the enforcement of a pure 
food law most comprehensive in its scope and detail. Through 
the generosity of an honored citizen, a sanatorium for the treat- 
ment of tuberculous patients is now being erected in Pittsford 
and when completed will be turned over to the state as a gift. 

Liquor L#aw. — The liquor law in effect in Vermont is a 
local-option-license statute under which each town decides by 
popular vote annually whether or not it shall license the sale of 
intoxicating liquors within its jurisdiction for the year ensuing. 
The fee for license to sell liquor is divided between the munici- 
pality and the state, one half to each, the state's proportion 
being devoted to the highway fund. There are at present 32 
towns in Vermont that license the sale of intoxicating liquor. 

Religious. — Vermont enjoys the religious ministry of all 
the principal Christian denominations which are for the most part 
in sound economic condition, maintain comfortable houses of 
worship and employ pulpit talent of a high standard, beside 
devoting much money and energy to philanthropic movements and 
institutions of various kinds. There is also a very small member- 
ship in the Jewish faith in the state with its customary high 
charactered ministry, wdiile Spiritualists and other religious or- 
ganizations are also to be found. The private and public rela- 
tions of all these bodies are exceedingly cordial and truly Ameri- 
can, and the line of religious dift'erence is not drawn in politics 
or social life. 

The Press. — The newspaper press of Vermont is acknowl- 
edged by competent judges of the journalistic profession to be 
far and away superior in its editorial standard, literar}' quality, 
and typographical excellence to the press of the average rural 
state, and plays a very important part not only in the government 
of the commonwealth but in the fomiation of the local popular 
opinion on national affairs as well. There are nine daily and jy 
weekly newspapers in the state and their circulation per capita 
far exceeds that of many more populous commonwealths. The 



The Green Moimfaiii Sfate. 25 

X'ermont press is characteristically independent in its editorial 
attitude toward politics and public affairs generally and is most 
enthusiastically helping to exploit the great business "resources 
of the state. 

Like all rural people. \'ermonters have had to share in the 
laugh turned upon themselves by the paragrapher and the car- 
toonist. Ehit the paragrapher and the cartoonist would be 




^^:.-^^ 






^;v^^^ftte^-*:.^^ 



Birdseye View of the Champlain Valley. 



amazed to find how many of the high class newspapers and 
periodicals of national reputation find their way into the snug 
homes of the people living among the Green Mountains, they 
would be surprised to learn what superior literary cultivation, 
what unusual degree of cosmopolitan knowledge and experience 
characterize these dwellers out of the country's great market 
places and off the main highways of continental travel. 




A Glimpse of Lake Champlain. 



The Green Mountain State. 27 



Education 



From the earliest pioneering days the people of Vermont 
have been earnestly devoted to the cause of free popular educa- 
tion and have steadily kept pace ever since with progressive 
theory in school laws and the most advanced methods in the 
conducting of school institutions. The first constitution, adopted 
in 1777, fourteen years before Vermont was admitted to the 
Union, simply voiced an already established public sentiment 
when it declared that "a competent number of schools ought to 
be maintained in each town for the convenient instruction of the 
youth, and one or more grammar schools be incorporated and 
properly supported in each county of the state." And the same 
spirit has influenced \"ermont school legislation from that day to 
this. 

Elementary Education.— Every community in the 
state, of course, has its regularly constituted public schools of 
the elementary grades and in some of the larger villages and in 
the cities are Roman Catholic parochial schools covering this 
field. Beside the established course of instruction for this grade, 
special teachers may be engaged to teach vocal music, physical 
culture, drawing, and the industrial arts and sciences. The larger 
communities have for years maintained kindergarten schools in 
the public school system and this feature is extending itself more 
and more to comprehend the smaller towns. 

Secondary Education. — Under the law of Vermont 
every child in the state is entitled to free high school advantages 
to the extent of preparation for college. Every town that does 
not maintain a high school is obliged to pay the tuition of its 
advanced pupils in secondary schools of other towns. There are 
about 75 high schools and 15 academies in the state. There is a 
growing disposition to introduce manual training, into the public 
school course and in some schools it is already successfully under 
wav. 



28 



The Green Mountain State. 



Higher Education —There are three colleges in \'er- 
mont and the state provides thirty scholarships in each. Two of 
these institutions are over one hundred years old and have long- 
been recognized in the educational world as among the- foremost 
of the smaller colleges. The other has been established 87 years 
and is the most famous and best military school in the country 
after the United States military academy at West Boint. 




Killington and Pico Mountains. 

It was in \'ermont that Emma Willard, the noted pioneer in 
her line of educational work in this country, opened the first 
female seminary in the United States. 

Public Libraries.— All the larger communities have free 
public libraries furnished by gift or local public enterprise, and 
the state in addition by a law administered by a state library 
commission gives generous aid to any community that will 
establish a free public library. As a consequence, less than a 
hundred towns in the state arc without such a library. 



The Green Moiiiitaiit State. 29 

Education of Defectives.— 1'lie state generously fur- 
nislies free education for the blin;l and deaf and dumb in several 
noted institutions in Xew England. 

Text Books- — Pupils are furnished free text books 
throughout the elementary and secondary public schools. 

Agricultural College. — A X'ermonter, the late United 
States Senator Justin S. Morrill, was the father of agricultural 
colleges in the United States and in Morrill Hall at Burlington 
the state maintains an excellent agricultural college. A state 
agricultural experiment station also contributes its high class 
facilities to complete this course of instruction. 

Normal Schools. — As an evidence of the part played by 
\'ermont in educational work it is of interest to note that the first 
school on this continent for the training of teachers was opened 
in this state in 1823. There are three normal schools in \"ermont 
supported by the state and alTording free instruction to residents. 
The standard of qualifications for a teacher in the public schools 
is high and the granting of certificates to teachers is regulated by 
a law requiring most searching tests as to mental and moral fit- 
ness. 

Administration. — The general educational afl:'airs of \'er- 
mont are under a superintendent of education from whose de- 
partment radiates a system of administration that comprehends 
personal oversight of the work even in the smallest public school 
in the most obscure hamlet. The state has entered upon a policy 
of centralization of elementary schools in the rural towns so that 
instead of the maintenance of several small and scattered schools 
of this kind, as was customary under the old system, pupils are 
now transported at the public expense daily from these rural 
sections to some one large and well equipped elementary school. 
The law also provides for state assistance to towns in the hiring 
of expert school superintendents, the state treasury contributing 
$1,000 toward the salary of every such superintendent engaged 
in compliance with its provisions. 

Support. — Each town primarily supports its own school 
by local taxation, aided by revenue from lands, tuitions, be- 
quests, and state appropriations, and, in the case of small towns. 



The Crccii Mountain Stufc 



31 



by a portion of the state school tax. The state has invested a 
permanent school fund amounting" to a million and a quarter 
dollars, the revenue from which is applied to the aid of educa- 
tional work by the towns. In addition, the laws are most 
generous and provide for a variety of ways whereby the state 
treasury can supplement the efforts of progressive towns that 
make some show of helping themselves to begin with. 




A \'iew of Lake Bomoseen. 



An unusual impetus has been given to the {)ublic interest in 
educational matters within the past year or so, some of the most 
advanced legislation ever undertaken by the state in this line 
has been enacted, and the already creditable record of the Ver- 
mont schools promises to be left far behind in the development 
of this new spirit of an even more generous and practical free 
popular education. 




K'lk I'.iun (11 ]>aki_ C hailiplain. 



TJic Grccii Mountain State. 33 



Manufacturing and Industrial 



It is a widespread ])opular idea that A'ermont is mainly an 
ag-ricultural state and that the greater part of her people are 
farmers. Proud as she is of her prosperous farms and the men 
and women that have made them prosperous, she still finds other 
employment than tilling the soil for more than 63 per cent, of 
her inhabitants. The census shows that of the total population 
of the state at least 10 years old engaged in gainful occupations, 
36.9 per cent, were employed in agricultural pursuits, 26.8 per 
cent, in manufacturing and mechanical pursuits, 17.1 per cent, 
in domestic and personal service, 14 per cent, in trade and trans- 
portation, and 5.2 per cent, in professional service. 

The special census made by the United States government 
in 1905 shows the total annual value of \'enuont manufactured 
]>roducts (in concerns with a product valued at $500 and over) 
to be $63,083,611, a gain of 22.5 per cent, over the figures of the 
cjnsus of ICKDO. There was also a gain of 47.4 per cent, in the 
total capital invested, an increase of 17.5 per cent, in the num- 
ber of workmen employed, and of 2,^.2 per cent, in the amount of 
wages paid. 

Leading Industries. — The eleven leading industries, in 
the state, according to the United States government classifica- 
tion in their order of rank are: (i) Butter and cheese, (2) 
lumber and timber products: (3) marble and stone work; (4) 
woolen g(X)ds; (5) monuments and tombstones; (6) paper and 
Avood pulp; (7) flour and grist mill products; (8) foundry and 
ir.achine shop products; (9) lumber, planing mill products, in- 
cluding sash, doors, and blinds; (10) hosiery and knit goods; 
(11) cotton goods. 

It may be explained that the character of the material used 
and the work done in the industry shown as "marble and stone 
A\ork" and the industry shown as "monuments and tombstones" 
are practically- the same, so that they may properly be treated as 
a single industry. This makes stone manufactures the l-adinsj 



The Green Mountain State. 

manufacturing industry in the state. The capital employed in 
this industn' increased 170.1 per cent, in the five years, the num- 
ber of wage earners 73-5 per cent., the wages paid 68.1 per cent.. 
and the value of products 50 per cent. 

Next to stone manufactures, the combined textile mdustnes 
in 1905 had products of the greatest value. The capital invested 




A Mammoth Bam on a Vermont Farm. 

in them in the five years had increased 56.4 per cent., the number 
of wage earners 13.1 per cent., wages, 24.8 per cent., and the value 
of products 43.8 per cent. 

For the purposes of this book only the most generalizing 
survey of the manufacturing and other industrial interests and 
resources of the state may properly be made. The special ad- 



The Green Moiintain State. ^5- 

vantages of no particular locality can be dwelt upon with fairness 
to all the others where there is such a wealth of material to con- 
dense into such little space. So, also, to chronicle by name the 
various manufacturing and business concerns throughout the 
state whose enterprise and prosperity are such important factors 
in the development of its economic resources would mean to turn 
what is meant to be simply a little handbook of suggestions into 
a commercial gazetteer. 

What Vermont Manufactures— The great marble, 
granite, slate, dairy products, canning and lumbering industries 
may be here passed over with the remark that such details con- 
cerning them as may be appropriately contemplated by this work 
are all told elsewhere. 

The list of manufacturing industries then to follow would 
embrace a most miscellaneous collection of enterprises. Under 
the general classification of wood working manufactures might 
be included the making of furniture, interior house finishings 
shade rollers, screens, blinds, refrigerators, box shooks and boxes.' 
butter tubs, barrels, cofi:-ins, clothespins, children's toys, wagons 
and vehicles of all kinds, and novelties of every description 
There are extensive pulp mills and paper mills, manufactories of 
cotton and woolen goods, underwear, dress fabrics, overalls and 
all varieties of garments. The largest and most famous scale 
works m the land have long been established in Vermont and 
have made two trade names household words. The same may be 
said of the manufacture of organs, one concern in particular 
ranking among the foremost on the continent in the qualit\- an<] 
reputation of its product. There are extensive metal workin- 
plants, machine shops turning out some of the most widely cir^- 
culated wares, together with manufactories of agricultural im- 
plements, dairy and maple sugar making apparatus, cutlerv steel 
carpenters' squares, bridges -tc. Some of the most noted tan- 
neries in the country flourisii here, also, and one of the largest 
powder and ammunition companies in the United States is located 
in the state. Then the list might go on to include photographic 
supplies, cereal foods, patent medicines, confectionery, cigars 
brooms and brushes, stereoscopes and steregraphs, boots and 
shoes, brassware, dyes, foundry products, knit goods, shoddy 
brick, and a seemingly endless variety of manufactures and in- 



TJic Green Moiinfain State. 2)7 

dnstrial pursuits identified with the hte of a prosperous and 
growing society. 

Strange as it may seem to the pubHc at large that has been 
taught to regard \'ermont as a purely agricultural state, there 
are in \ ermont to-day various luanutacturing enterprises that 
are the largest of their kind in the world or in the country and 
that are sending their products to every (|uarter of the globe. 

After a long period of comparative inactivity in imlustrial 
pursuits, apart from farming and allied interests, \ ermont has 
within the past decade or so begun to enter upon a manufactur- 
ing and industrial career that ])r()mises to place her well in 
advance among the states in this employment of the energies of 
her people. And the best of it all is that this enterprise is 
founded wholly upon the development of untold natural resource 
and is in no sense the result of any artificial stimulus. It is the 
outgrowth of a natural and healthy evolution of business purpose, 
a keener recognition of commercial opportunities, and a fast 
developing popular spirit of ambition to exploit the latent advant- 
ages of a region whose great potential wealth has hitherto long 
lain practically untouched in the characteristic American haste 
to pioneer in new fields. 

Business Opportunities.— ^ ermont to-day stands in 
need uf men and money to develop untold water-power that for 
generations has been tumbling down her hillsides unharnessed 
She offers exceeding great opportunities for far sighted, enter- 
prising men with capital who will utilize these water falls in the 
manufacture of an endless variety of wares that can be produced 
at a good profit within her borders, or who will install electric 
plants and furnish light for her villages, and power for street 
railways and manufacturing i)lants. She has yet great possibili- 
ties of imdeveloped mineral wealth, notwithstanding the tremen- 
dous strides capital and brains have already accomplished in 
this direction. All over the state there are yet stores of marble, 
granite, soapstone, talc, asbestos, kaolin, and other minerals 
waiting to be delved for by the men that have capital and 
experience to undertake the work. 

Favoring Conditions. — And the inducements to these 
undertakings are something beside the wealth of natural re- 



38 



The Green Mountain State. 



source upon which they may be founded. Because the state is 
in effect only setting out upon this industrial career and her 
cities and villages are only beginning to appreciate the tremen- 
dous possibilities in it and are anxious to have a share in the 
prosperity to follow, land values are still moderate, rents are 
low, local banking facilities are yet untaxed, and the incidental 
expense of maintenance and operation of plants governed by 









.]-:i^ 






\ .^IKi^ ""'1 


r~i^' ,i|l 


1 


■■' H 


^^^BIH 



A Alaple Grove in Summer. 



local conditions is reasonable. Vermont communities, as a rule, 
are not burdened with debt, the ancient thrift of New England 
instinct having played a prudent part in all their financing. Taxes 
are not oppressive, and the current local opinion throughout the 
state readily concedes to incoming industries exemption from 
taxation for a period of ten years under the provisions of the 
state law. 



The Green Mountain State. 



39 



The Labor Question. — The labor problem in \'ermont 
is not complicated. The relations between capital and labor in 
the state are not only generally harmonious, but the conditions 
under which labor is employed there ; the advantages of residence 
in small cities and villages adjacent to the countryside with the 
resultant benefits of sanitary housing, abundance of pure food 
lit normal prices; unexcelled and in some respects peculiar oppor- 
tunities afforded workingmen for participation in local, social. 




.^- < ^ 



Camel s Hump. 



and civic life in the spirit of healthy democracy; convenient and 
first-class free educational facilities for their children ; the oppor- 
tunity to own their own homes and play their own individual 
part in the affairs of a community hampered by no long-standing 
artificial class distinctions — all these and many more similar con- 
ditions combine to make the establishment and upbuilding of 
industrial life in Vermont an undertaking free of most of the 
vexatious and even threatening evils that make it such a risk 
of money and effort in the regions already overcrowded. 



'I'ln- Crccii Moiiniaiii State. 41 



Mineral Resources 



The country is just beginnini;- to realize the i;reat importance 
of the mineral resources of Vermont, but X'ermonters themselves 
have been steadily toiling away at their, quarries for more than 
a hundred years, have developed immensely profitable industries 
in the production of rough stone and finished building and monu- 
mental work, and have yet hardly made the first impression upon 
the, incalculable wealth of material that generous Nature has 
stored away among their old green hills. And yet the value of 
the product more than doubled in the five years from 1900 to 
1905 and is increasing proportionately. 

Vermont to-day produces more marble than any other state 
and, in fact, more than all the other states of the Union combined. 
In the production of granite, according to the latest statistics at 
hand, she ranks third, Massachusetts being first and Maine 
second. In the production of slate, V^ermont is second only 
to Pennsylvania. The state actually leads the world in the pro- 
duction of the more costly kinds of monumental and building 
stone. Thousands of men are employed in this great industry 
and millions of dollars are annually distributed in wages to these 
workmen, while handsome profits are reaped upon the constantly 
increasing capital employed in the business. The product is sent 
to every part of the civilized world. Year by year new deposits 
of these and other minerals are brought to light in various parts 
of the state and more than one little mountain hamlet of but a 
few years ago is being transformed into a busy industrial center, 
while in yet remote and undeveloped parts of the state vast cjuanti- 
ties of valuable minerals are still waiting the enterprise and 
capital that are to exploit them. 

The scope of this book will not permit detailed description 
of this immense industry or the tremendous possibilities of profit 
to the public and to investors that are constantly ojx'uing out of 
it, because any such description must necessaril\ be too technical 
and statistical for popular reading. lUit this one I)ranch of 
Vermont's resources alone is destined to give her ]:)rominent 
rank amonsj the industrial states of the countrw 



42 



The Green Mountain State. 



Marble. — Vermont supplies the world with over four 
million dollars" worth of marble annually, more than all the other 
states of the Union combined, and more than any other one dis- 
trict on the globe. Most of the marble produced by other states 
is of a rather inferior grade and, therefore, can be used only for 
building purposes, while that produced in Vermont is used for 




: c$ 




, 4»«»- 




\ 



A Typicil Vermont Marble Quarry. 



monumental and interior building work, which requires the 
finest quality, and there is also a large quantity consumed for 
exterior building purposes. Two-thirds of the valuable marble 
used for monumental purposes comes from the state. 

The largest marble companies in the world are situated in 
Vermont and one of them is said to be actually larger than any 
other six of the world's marble companies combined. This com- 



The Green Mountain State. 43 

l)any produces about one-half of all the marble sold in this 
country and probably two-thirds of the best varieties used in 
monumental and interior work. 

\'ermont also produces a very wide range of marble, there 
l)eing; white, clouded white, several shades of blue, green, pink, 
many shades of red, and the dark green Verde Antique of Rox- 
bury, this latter standing pre-eminent among the green marbles 
])roduced in the world. 

The state is rich in limestone, some kinds of which when 
sawn and polished are used as marble, while the remainder is 
converted into lime in which a large and profitable trade is main- 
tained. 

Granite. — There is good authority for believing that there 
is practically no limit to the amount of granite that Vermont can 
produce. Certain it is that the state already stands first in the 
value of rough granite sold for monumental work, and the 
amount of granite sold in the rough for building stock equals 
that produced in Massachusetts or Maine, once and for a long 
time the country's chief sources of supply. Barre has already 
become the world's greatest granite quarrying and manufacturing 
center and is growing rapidly. New quarries are frequently 
being opened in various parts of the state and nobody knows what 
enormous stores of this stone remain yet to be developed. The 
N'ermont granite is of unsurpassed quality and has proved highly 
suitable even for statuary. The total value of the annual 
granite product is in the neighborhood of five million dollars. 

Slate. — The only state in the Union that produces more 
slate than Vermont is Pennsylvania, but even Pennsylvania does 
not produce slate of a better quality. In some years the value of 
the Vermont slate output has been double that produced in all 
the other states of the Union except Pennsylvania and the busi- 
ness is steadily growing. Most of this product is roofing slate, 
but stone is also found from which billiard tables, mantels, tiling, 
etc.. are made and \'ermont may be said to enjoy the largest part 
of the trade in this latter quality. Some of the Vermont slate, 
such as the unfading green and purple, is found nowhere else. 

Other Minerals. — \ ermont has large deposits of good 
buihling stone, soapstone, lime, talc, manganese, mica, ochre. 



Tlic Crccii Mountain State. 



45 



kaolin, and asbestos which are more or less profitably worked. 
There are also extensive deposits of copper and iron ore, but the 
latter is not worked at present, although the indications are that 
the increasing demands of trade and improved methods of min- 
ing and smelting will some day result in activity along these lines 
also. There is some gold in \>rmont. but it is not found in 
paying quantities, generally speaking. 




'Riverside Drive" — Lamoille River. 



All in all there is abundant evidence on every hand that the 
varied mineral wealth stored away among the mountains of Ver- 
mont, while not offering inducement to the "bonanza nug-get" 
and "get rich quick" kind of mining speculations, is nevertheless 
of such genuinely substantial character as to quality and quantity 
as to mean limitless wealth to the pluck that is now developing 
and shall hereafter develop it. 




A Har\est Scene on a Vermont Farm. 



The Green Mountain State. 47 

Agriculture 

Vermonters long ago discovered that their state was not 
designed by Nature to become a great agricidtural region in the 
sense that the term is apphed to the vast grain-growing sections 
of the country. But they also discovered, and learned to profit 
by the discovery, that Vermont is unexcelled by any and equalled 
by few states in the Union in the production of a variety of small 
field crops and orchard fruits, for certain kinds of stock raising, 
for dairying, for the production of maple sugar, for poultry and 
bee keeping, and, in fact, for a multiplicity of kindred pursuits 
growing out of or allied wath the tilling of the soil. And along 
these lines of specialized and intensive farming the Vermont 
agriculturists have wrought for themselves a substantial pros- 
perity that, abundant as it already has become, is only the begin- 
ning of a wealth more abundant still that the development and 
practice of ever improving scientific and business methods is 
destined to achieve. However tempting the possibilities of great 
profits from the broader ventures of farming on the fertile 
prairies of the West, a few simple facts in regard to farming in 
Vermont still stubbornly persist, to promise the right kind of a 
farmer a more even average of }'ear by year prosperity and 
money-making than can be enjoyed in but few other parts of 
the country. 

Some Interesting Figures. — Of a total land area of 
5,846,400 acres, 80.8 per cent., or 4.724,440 acres, is included in 
farms. The higher hills and mountains furnish excellent pastur- 
age, while the valleys and lower hjlls are put under cultivation. 
The total value of farm property, according to the census of 1900, 
was $108,451,427, and the annual products, $33,570,892, and 
there have undoubtedly been substantial gains in both values 
since. Over 78 per cent, of \'ermont farms are conducted bv 
their owners, a good sign of the agricultural thrift of the state. 
Another good sign of this thrift is that, while the average value 
per farm for farm buildings in the United States as a whole is 
$620, in Vermont it is $1,125. ^'i the per capita value of agri- 
cultural products Vermont is exceeded by only eleven states. 



48 



The Cvccn Mountain State. 



Broadly speaking, \'ermont's principal agricultural crops are 
butter and cheese, maple sugar and syrup, livestock, and lumber. 

The animal products of the state, according to the last cen- 
sus, represented 45.9 per cent, of the value of all farm products 
and 70 per cent, of the gross farm income. Dairy products 
alone make up 60.5 per cent, of this income from animal products, 
while 26.9 per cent, represents animals sold or slaughtered on 
farms; 10 per cent, poultry and eggs; and 2.6 per cent, wool, 




A Countrv Road. 



honey, and miscellaneous products. More than half the farms 
in the state derive their principal income from dairy products. 
\'ermont farms already support more dairy cows per acre than 
the farms of any other state, produce more butter and cheese in 
proportion to population than any other state, and the dairying 
business is still expanding. The manufacture of butter has been 
divorced from farm life, however, under the modern creamery 
system, and that phase of this subject will be treated elsewhere 
in this book. 



TJic Green Mountain State. 



49 



Livestock. — Livestock is one of the most valuable pro- 
ducts of the \'ermont farms. Not many years ago X'ermont 
Morgan horses were in great demand throughout the country 
and the Green jMountain horse market was famous. While the 
quality of the best breeds has always been that of an intelligent, 
useful, enduring horseflesh, yet it is only recently that a re- 




A Prize Dairy Cow. 

awakening in tlie demand for higiier grades of horses has stim- 
ulated \'ermonters once more to produce their best. The 
United States government is now conducting a breeding station 
for the raising of Morgan horses in connection with the X'ermont 
state experiment station. The government, after long search 
and careful inspection of some hundreds of heads of Morgan 



The Green Mountain State. 



51 



horses, has selected several of the best of the type and is under- 
taking to restore the old stock by modern scientific methods. 

It is now many years since sheep raising was the principal 
source of income of Vermont farmers, but some of the benefits 
to the native stock originating in that day have been perpetuated 
to the present time. It was a Vermonter, it will be remembered, 
that introduced the Spanish Merino sheep to this country and 







A Flu.. '/■ niont Slieep. 

adapted the breed to our climate and environment. Since that 
day the breeding of Vermont Merinos has been a profitable busi- 
ness in some parts of Vermont. Radical changes in market 
demands have made general sheep raising less profitable than in 
former days, but there is a noticeable awakening toward better 
realization of opportunities in this line. Vermont's hillsides fur- 
nish excellent pasturage for sheep, while there is some land 
neglected and worthless to-day that might profitably be turned 



The Green Mountain State. 



53 



into sheep pasture. Even as it is. the averaoe value ])er head for 
\ erinont sheep is $4.10, or 26 cents oreater than the average 
valuation for the country at large. 

So, too, \'ermont swine are valued at $9 a head, whereas the 
average valuation for the country is $7.62. 

A\'hat \'ermont farms are doing in the production of lumher 




Haying Scene on a Vermont Farm. 



IS told in another part of this hook in connection with the account 
of the state's forestry interests generallv. 

Field Crops. — \'ermont's principal farm crops are corn, 
oats, harley, rye, buckwheat, potatoes, and hay. The viekl per 
acre and the price per bushel of corn. oats, barley, and rye 
are considerably in excess of the average for the country at large. 



The Green Mountain State. 



55 



but, with the exception of potatoes, all these crops are mostly 
raised for home consumption, and, while the national average of 
productiveness per acre for potatoes is 1.2 bushels more than 
the average for Vermont, the X'ermont price is 3.9 cents a bushel 
higher. Hay is one of X'ermont's great staple crops, and even 
with the immense amount of pasture lantl kept for the use of 




Scene Along the \Vhite River Valley. 

home dairying interests and the great quantities of home grown 
hay fed to Vermont stock, the yield for market is abundant and 
profitable. Wonderfully productive fruit orchards in the Cham- 
plain Valley and flourishing tobacco fields in the lower Connec- 
ticut Valley represent two strong specialized farming interests in 
Vermont and may well, be taken as illustrating extremes within 
which the money-making opportunities of Vermont farmers lie. 



TJic Grccii Mountain State. 57 

As a matter of fact there practically is no such thing as 
abandoned farming land in \ermont. There are considerable 
areas, once devoted to fanning, that are no longer under culti- 
vation, it is true, but they represent lands that probably would 
never have been deforested in the light of modern knowledge of 
scientific farming. They are now simply reverting to forest in 
which condition they will be even more valuable, if anything, 
than they could have been under cultivation. 

Some Advantages. — The soil of \'ermont. if not i)rolific, 
is generous and readih' \ields al)un(lant crops when skilfully tilled 
and jutliciously fertilized. And this very matter of refertiliza- 
tion of his land to compensate for the enormous expenditure of 
productive elements that have been taken out of it without renewal 
all these years, that is coming to be such a problem to the Western 
farmer with his miles and miles of fields, gives the X'ermont 
farmer comparatively little concern. His farm is much smaller, 
its various parts are more diversilied in character of soil, he can 
successfully practice a careful rotation of crops that will maintain 
its productive capacity in constantly healthy condition, and his 
stock will help him to piece out with natural fertilizer the elements 
necessary to complete the renewal of the productiveness of his 
lands. The \'ermont farmer spends less money per arable acre 
for commercial fertilizers than any other farmer east of the Mis- 
sissippi River. 

Water Supoly. — I'he question of sufficient water supply 
from rainfall or from springs and water courses gives him no 
anxiety, because he dwells in a region abundantly supplied the 
whole year through with all the essentials to the most profitable 
farniing. Elsewhere in this book reference is made to the copious 
rainfall regularly induced b\- the peculiar mountain formation in 
\'ermont. There are ^f)^ lakes and ponds and hundreds and 
hundreds of rivers and lesser streams beside, and such a thing 
as a drouth is practically unknown to \'ermont agriculture. So 
is the complete failure of cro])s from other natural causes. There 
are no fat and lean years in N'ermont farming, broadly speaking, 
because every farmer raises a variety of crops that are not all 
likely to be affected for good or ill by the same causes. 

The Vermont farmer is not troubled by the transportation 
problem because he is next door to the most populous section of 



TJic Green Moil It tain State. 59 

the country and can land his proihice in the hest markets in the 
shortest time. Not only thai, Init the remarkable growth of 
manufacturing and general industrial interests in his own state 
has opened for him a home market in the neighboring cities and 
villages that offers the best of steady prices for the variety of 
small fann products that he has to sell. 

The Vermont farmer can be more nearly intlependent upon 
his comparatively small farm than his Western contemporary 
can be upon his vast estates, because the Green Mountain farm 
is made up of more diversified lands and includes timber for 
building and fuel, pasturage, orchard tracts, garden plots, fields, 
and meadows, all within an easy range of economic and self- 
supporting husbandry. 

The Social Side. — Finally, the Vermont farmer can live 
closer to the village life and in more reciprocal social relations 
with the busier world outside because of the nearness of his farm 
to all of them and the ease that has come to travel by convenient 
and constantly extending transportation facilities. His children 
are nearer to more advanced schools than the old time rural dis- 
tricts once afforded, his family can enjoy the recreations and 
amusements that the village and city life next door at all times 
offer, the rural free delivery of mails brings the daily newspapers 
to his very doorstep, and the telephone will put him into momen- 
tary communication with a friend, the store, or the family physi- 
cian. The Vermont farmer is no longer a pastoral recluse, a 
rural type in voluntary exile from the social, business, and political 
life of the township to which he belongs. He is as familiar with 
the affairs of his nearest village as the citizen that dwells therein, 
takes an active part in the affairs of the village and township, 
holds his share of political offices, and plays an important role 
in the machinery of the state at large. Happily for him, the 
state is not so large that her people cannot dwell together in 
neighborliness and communal spirit, and, of those that seek the 
pleasures of such companionship, he on his well-kept acres is the 
most independent man of all. 









» :i!r^:i'^f 






^■■■i-.:^ 



^'>^L/i '-"^ 









p^'^.mn 



^., wi 14 



A Read throukrh Uic Wuuds. 



The Grc'cii Moiiiitiuii State. 6i 



Horticulture 



Tlie golden apples that grew in the (jarden of the Hesperides 
were myths ; the JDrecious apples that grow in the garden spot of 
Xew England known as \'ermont are all very real. So \'emiont 
goes antiquity and the classics and even the fahles of the gods 
one better in this, as in everything else. The apples that grow in 
\'ermont are golden, indeed, in the sense that they make up one 
of the most profitable crops that can reward the labors of the 
husbandman. Scientific horticulture is fast supplanting the old 
haphazard way that simply trusted to Xature and took chances. 
To-day all \'ermont"s new orchards are carefully selected and 
tended, individual trees are methodically cared for root and branch 
as a plant should be, the fruit is so gathered as to be most at- 
tractively presentable for the metropolitan and European market, 
and, even at that, the work has only fairly begun. Some farmers, 
especially in Grand Isle county, make several thousand dollars 
every year in clean profit from their apple orchards, and thus 
demonstrate how intensive farming along specialized lines can 
be made to pay in X'ermont. The quality of the fruit is un- 
excelled anywhere on earth, the north temperate latitude of the 
state and its peculiar climatic conditions being especially favorable 
for its growth and ripening. Pears, plums, and cherries are 
grown successfully and are unsurpassed in all market points of 
excellence, but thus far have not commanded the attention given 
to apples. 

Quinces and peaches can be raised in some parts of the state 
but, as a general proposition, not profitably. \'ermont raises 
the small fruits, strawberries, raspberries, blackberries, currants. 
etc. Grapes are also grown, but, for the most part, only in a 
small way for private domestic uses. 



s 



^ C^g _ '' "' 'r'a 1 1 I -in I ■ I r I I I i«?^T^^S^S 




^ 







,^\.-»r'-«r«iTe- 



Sltamers Na\i>iating Lake Champlain. 



Tlic Green Mountain State. 63 



Food and Accessories 



Butter. — Vermont ranks seventh among the states in the 
quantity of butter manufactured but takes second place for none 
of them in point of its quaHty. As can readily be understood, 
the state's limited area is alone responsible for the quantity of 
butter made, for nowhere in the Union do conditions combine to 
produce more favorable conditions for the dairy than in the green 
pastures and beside the still waters of old Vermont, and "prime 
Vermont butter" has a reputation in the markets that superior 
capacity of production cannot overcome. The far-famed "blue 
grass" of Kentucky is simply the common pasture grass of Ver- 
mont, but, while Kentucky has been posing hers in romantic 
literature and poetry, Vermont has been quietly turning hers 
into rich cream and golden butter that appeal both to the palate 
and the imagination. 

The old time home dairy methods have given wa}- to the 
creamery system and the manufacture of butter in X'ermont to- 
day is a great organized industn' in which the farmer's part is 
to furnish the raw material to the factory. In recent years, with 
the awakening of a higher conception of possibilities in all 
farming interests, the farmers of Vermont have come more than 
ever before to realize the importance of conducting their dairies 
along the most advanced lines of practical scientific methods in 
the selection and breeding of cows, their feeding and care, the 
elimination of bovine tuberculosis from the herds, and the observ- 
ance of approved suggestions of hygiene in the construction of 
stables, regulation of milking, care of the milk, etc. The result 
is, of course, that not only is dairying coming to be immensely 
more profitable under the new system than it ever was even under 
the palmiest days of old methods, but many farmers are making 
it the principal feature of their farms and are steadily increasing 
their herds, while it is more and more coming to be seen that 
Vermont still has vast undeveloped resources in the dairy that 
the progressive spirit of the generation is bound to bring out. 



64 



The Green Moitiitaiii State. 



Already the special census of 1905 shows that Vermont increased 
her butter product over that of 1900 nearly 25 per cent., 21.4 per 
cent, to be exact. In 1905 the state had 179 butter factories and 
annually produced 27,256,874 pounds of butter valued at 
$6,416,437, and the figures are still o-rowino^ in the same ratio. 
Vermont had within her borders for many ^■ears the lar.q-est butter 
factory in the world and it has only recently been eclipsed in 
size by a Western creamery. 







.t.F-,$*^.^., 



A 




A (jraiid Isle County Apple Orchard in Blossom. 



Cheese. — Comparatively little attention is paid to the manu- 
facture of cheese and its by-products, the total value of the manu- 
factured product in a year being only $433,679 according to the 
last special census. There are only 48 cheese factories in the 
state, none of them very important, but the quality of the product 
is excellent and there are great possibilities of profit in the 
development of this business. 



TJie Green Mountain State. 



65 



Condensed Milk. — There are now several condensed milk 
factories in the state, two of them very large institutions owned 
by great concerns of national repute, and doing a flourishing 
business. The indications are that this line of dairy products 
will be even more extensively developed within the next few 
years. 




A String of Fish Caught in One Day by Hook and Line. 



In addition to all this, Vermonters are sending great quanti- 
ties of fresh cream and milk daily by express cars to the Atlantic 
coast cities and other points in the East, and this profitable traffic 
has already begun to cut a considerable figure in the economics 
of the progressive farmer. 



66 



The Green Mountain State. 



Maple Sugar. — Even in the days when the red men alone 
knew this region, the maple sugar product of the Green Mountain 
forests was esteemed a rare delicacy by the savages who risked 
safety and even life to gather the delicious maple honey every 
season. Vermont's territory was the disputed hunting grounds 
lying between the haunts of the Iroquois and the Algonquin 




A Maple Sugar Bubh and House. 



Indians and these great warlike families and hereditary foes were 
each jealous of the encroachments of the other upon the preserve. 
So in the spring time, when the sap began to run, little bands of 
Indians would make their way stealthily down from Canada or 
across from the home of the Iroquois in New York and revel in 
the luxury of stolen sweets in momentary peril of murderous 



The Green Moioitaiii State. 



67 



onslaught from their deadly enemies the while. The Indians in 
those days gashed the bark of the maple tree with their toma- 
hawks and gathered the sap in troughs rudely scooped out of 
logs. The squaws then plunged redhot stones into the sap con- 
tinuously until the hissing, steaming liquid was thus clumsily 
"boiled down" to a thick syrup and could be stirred until it 
"grained" and was sugar. 




A Vermont Morgan Horse. 



To-day maple sugar making in \"ermont is conducted by the 
most advanced methods and by the use of most ingenious 
tools and apparatus, the product is refined and absolutely pure, 
and the manufacture of this great world delicacy is one of the 
abundant sources of profit open to the farmers of the state. 



08 The Green Mountain State. 

Vermont's maple sugar and syrup are famous the country 
over and Vermont leads the states of the Union in the quantity 
and quality of this product. This year 20,000,000 pounds of 
maple sweets were made in Vermont, representing a market 
value of about $3,500,000. 

Now that the Pure Food Law has come at last, Vermont 
maple sugar and maple syrup, the finest in the land, will have 
some chance in competition with the vile concoctions that have 
been passed oflf under its name for so many years. It has been 
estimated that one city outside of Vermont has annually put upon 
the market more alleged "new Vermont maple sugar" than could 
be produced by the maple orchards of the state in their sweetest 
mood. 

Canneries.— In an unostentatious but none the less 
thorough manner, Vermont is beginning to make her industry 
felt in the canning trade and the prestige gained for the prepara- 
tion of high grades of canned vegetables and vegetable products 
by regions long associated in the popular mind with the making 
of the very best in this line is already threatened by the equal and 
in some respects superior products now being put on the market 
by Vermont factories. For instance, no sweet corn in the land 
is better and very few products arc as good as that grown upon 
Vermont soil in that proximity to the frost line that for some 
strange reason appears to bring out the latent flavor of this vege- 
table as it is not possible by all the arts of cultivation to do in 
warmer climes. Consequently the canned product, gathered from 
the best fruits of selected seed, sown, cultivated, ripened, and 
prepared under the experienced oversight of men that are special- 
izing in this branch, is the very last word in such food prepara- 
tions. The same thing may be said of the canning of beans, 
apples, tomatoes, pickles, and small fruits. 

There is a growing disposition on the part of the farmers to 
more and more each year improve the business opportunities 
offered by the canning factories in various parts of the state 
and this already indicates what is going to be one of the most 
profitable lines of the intensive farming now making its way here. 



The Green Mountain State. 69 



Forestry 



In • the past few years, Vermont has awakened to a more 
serious realization of the great possibilities in scientific forest cul- 
ture and is already beginning to experience profitable results from 
such a progressve policy. Fully three-fourths of Vermont soil 
is not agricultural land in the sense that it is neither meadow 
nor pasture, and of this nearly 2,000 square miles, or almost one- 
fifth of the state's total area, is covered with forests. Very little 
of the virgin forest is left to-day, but the second growth is 
mainly spruce, while pine is making its appearance rapidly, 
especially in the valleys of the Connecticut River and Lake 
Champlain. The soil of Vermont's hillsides is especially adapted 
to the growth of this valuable timber while the situation of the 
state with reference to rainfall is also abundantly favorable. 
Prevailing winds blow the Atlantic coast rain clouds directly over 
the territory while the mountain and hill-chain formations are 
such as to induce plentiful precipitation the whole length of the 
state throughout the year. This peculiarity of geography and 
topography is the real cause of the remarkable and world-famed 
verdure of Vermont's mountains and hills which long ago at- 
tracted such attention as to give the commonwealth the popular 
name of the Green Mountain State, in meaningful distinction 
from the bald, barren hill-tops of the White Mountains to the 
east of her borders. 

Vermont ranks fourth among the states in the production 
of spruce lumber, the annual cut being 125 million feet. 
So promising is the prospect for profitable investment under 
the latter-day methods of scientific forestry that the waste 
lands are fast being bought and planted to forest trees, the state 
lending its aid to such enterprise by a law that exempts from 
taxation for ten years such land planted to forest trees at the 
rate of 600 to the acre. Another law makes an annual appropria- 
tion for the maintenance of a nursery for forest seedlings of use- 
ful varieties at the state agricultural experiment station and pro- 



70 



The Green Mountain State. 



vides for the distribution to all applicants who are residents of or 
land owners in Vermont material for forest planting at actual 
cost, and also provides that suitable directions for planting, and 
skilled assistance or supervision for such work shall be furnished 
upon payment of the actual expense thereof. 




Winooski River and Camel's Hump in the Distance. 

Thrifty Vermonters are beginning to understand that for- 
tunes are to be made by restoring to timber so-called "abandoned 
farms", or parts of farms found not suitable for tillage, and the 
work of reforesting these tracts is beginning. Any man desiring 
to make a handsome investment for his children may do so 
to-day by simply buying some of this waste land and planting it 
with timber seedlings. Nature will do the rest. 



The Green Mountain State. yi 

Transportation 

X'ermont's industrial, trade, and social development is aided 
by an extent and character of railroad facilities that in many 
respects are unusual in a region of such comparatively sparse 
population. Indeed, it is not too much to say that some of the 
far more populous and wealthy commonwealths have not the 
same proportionate railroad mileage as Vermont and that many 
of them have far more towns isolated in a density of rural seclu- 
sion than Vermont. And there is a rural isolation in this country, 
too, that begets the apparent hopelessness of a backwoods prim- 
itiveness of thought and living that Vermont knows nothing 
about. 

\^ermont has a total steam railroad mileage of 1,062.55 
operated by nineteen railroad companies, and a total of over 105 
miles operated by 10 electric railways. Three great systems, the 
Central Vermont, Rutland, and Boston & Maine, operate over 
800 miles of road intersecting the state from north to south, 
furnishing with their connections direct trunk line passenger and 
freight transportation between New York and Boston and Mont- 
real and the West. In addition, each operates various branch 
lines running from the east or west to the main line, and short 
lines are operated by the Canadian Pacific, Grand Trunk, Del- 
aware & Hudson, Montpelier & Wells River, and other corpora- 
tions. Beside furnishing outlets for the trunk line traffic between 
the east and west already indicated, these lines furnish direct 
transportation through the White Mountains to Portland, Me., 
on the one hand, and to the Hudson River and Albany on the 
other. 

There are also quarry railroads built for the purpose of 
transporting marble and granite from the quarries to the sheds 
and for delivering rough stone or the finished product to the 
through lines. 

The electric railways are steadily growing in traffic im- 
portance and it is only a question of a short time when such lines 
will be very generally extended throughout <"he state. 

The Champlain Transportation Co. operates a fleet of new 
and handsome passenger and freight steamers on Lake Cham- 
plain, plying between Vermont and New York state ports, and 
doing a general excursion business. Canal connection between 
Lake Champlain and the Hudson river and the St. Lawrence 
river also provide facilities for an extensive all-water traffic. 



72 The Green Mountain State. 

Fish and Game 



Not the least of the manifold attractions of Vermont as a 
vacation outing resort is the abundance of fish and game to 
tempt the ardent sportsman that loves to devote whole days in 
succession to the fascinations of the chase and the rod or to offer 
occasional charming variety to the less devoted pleasure-seeker. 
The very same conditions .of climate, field and forest verdure, 
and plentiful waterways that make the rural parts of Vermont 
such rare delights of picturesque scenic beauty also favor the 
propagation and preservation of a multitude of furred, feathered, 
and finny creatures, while wise public statutes founded upon the 
careful observation and experience of years tend to protect all 
these to the best purposes of legitimate sport. Beside the great 
expanses of field and thicket and forest-clad hillside where the 
hunter may find pastime to his liking, Vermont contains 368 lakes 
and ponds beside noble old Lake Champlain and beautiful Lake 
Memphremagog, to say nothing of hundreds of rivers and smaller 
streams practically all abounding in fish. 

Deer Hunting. — Of course, the royal sport in Vermont, 
as elsewhere, is deer hunting. Although in the pioneering days 
this was a great natural abiding place for all the deer kind, in- 
cluding elk. caribou, and moose, yet the encroachments of civil- 
ization practically made these animals extinct so that thirty years 
ago the common deer was a rarity in the state and the occasional 
appearance of a stray solitary buck was an incident to be heralded 
in the newspapers. In 1878, a few deer were brought into the 
state by a company of public spirited Vermonters and set at lib- 
erty, while a stringent law was passed protecting them from the 
hunter. In eighteen years they had so multiplied in this favoring 
environment that the legislature of 1896 provided for an open 
season for deer hunting and it has been an annual sporting season 
of great attractions ever since. The deer are now very numerous 
throughout the state, being found in every county, and whole 
herds, sometimes numbering between thirty and forty, are 
occasionally seen at one time. It is no infrequent experience to 
see groups of deer from the carriage roads or to come upon a 
solitary creature in little walks in the country side, and this has 



The Green Mountain State. j^ 

come to be one of the novel charms of a summer's outing in rural 
Vermont. 

Game- — The hunter may now and then get a shot at a bear 
in some sections of the state where these animals are still some- 
what numerous, while foxes, rabbits, squirrels, and coons abound 
everywhere in the forests. Although protected by the game law, 
otter and beaver still survive to some extent in Vermont, and 
caribou and moose have occasionally been reported. 

Fish. — Of course. Lake Champlain, particularly that part 
known as the Great Back Bay, is a paradise for fishermen. Its 
waters abound in gamey food fish, while its picturesque and easily 
accessible islands, points, bays, and inlets provide the most charm- 
ing temptations of Nature for convenience and variety in the sport 
without any of the monotonous loneliness or danger of deep-sea 
fishing. The principal fish in Lake Champlain are the lake 
sturgeon, pike-perch or wall-eyed pike, yellow perch, muskal- 
longe, great northern pike, large and small-mouth bass, rock 
bass, mullet, sun fish, pickerel, common or yellow catfish, shad, 
white fish, smelt, lake or Mackinaw trout, and many varieties of 
eels and bull-heads. 

The interior lakes and ponds offer such prizes to fishermen 
as land-lock salmon, muskallonge, great northern pike, pickerel, 
Mackinaw trout, and common brook trout, and in some instances 
wall-eyed pike, steelhead and rainbow trout, and sabling and 
golden trout. Common brook trout are found in the mountain 
streams, and trout and bass and the coarser varieties of fish in the 
rivers. 

The United States government operates fish hatcheries at 
S wanton, St. Johnsbury, and Arlington, and a rearing station 
at Pittsford, and is annually planting millions of fish in Vermont 
waters. Beside this the state fish hatchery at Roxbury contrib- 
utes largely to the supply of trout. 

Game Birds. — Game birds are plentiful in Vermont. 
Along the shores of Lake Champlain and the inland lakes good 
duck hunting is to be enjoyed, while in the timbered lands part- 
ridge, woodcock, English snipe, plover, sandpiper, and a great 
variety of ducks abound. English pheasant and quail are being 
introduced with gratifying success in some counties, but are now 
protected by law. 



74 I'hc Green Mountain State. 



Vermont's Great " Out-doors " 



VERMONT offers to the summer home builder or the vaca- 
tion-seeker a remarkable combination of opportunities for 
rest and recreation in the repose of pastoral charm with 
sufficient nearness to the busier world outside to conveniently 
provide all the creature or social comforts that the habits of the 
generation demand. Her countryside, picturesquely rural and 
wonderfully diversified in scenic panorama, retains all the fresh- 
ness of its virgin loveliness without the primitive privations 
or depressing isolation of the wilderness, and lies in smiling 
enticement of green fields, fragrant flowers, sweet song birds, 
forest glens, babbling brooks, laughing waterfalls, mirrored 
ponds, romantic lakes, noble mountains, and God's own life- 
giving fresh air, literally next door to snug little communities of 
prosperous homes that enjoy the best of wholesome conveniences 
and luxuries of living. 

Vermont is a little state of short distances and has no well- 
nigh impenetrable interior area of solitude. Summer homes in 
this state may be situated amid all the quiet beauty of rural 
scenes and still be conveniently accessible from the great cities. 
This means, also, that the telegraph, telephone, mail, express, 
and similar facilities are easily available and that the busy man 
of affairs may dwell in restful vacation out of the city's rush and 
roar and still keep in communication with his business interests 
or find convenient and expeditious means of travel between his 
recreation and his cares. Vermont railroads and their connec- 
tions provide ample transportation facilities in up-to-date through 
passenger train service on schedules designed with special view 
to the accommodation of summer visitors to the state, and the 
journey between the large cities of the East and Vermont may 
comfortably be made any day between supper time and breakfast. 

Scenery. — To attempt faithfully to portray the beauties of 
Vermont scenery by means of cold and unsympathetic printers* 
ink would be rashly to rush in where poets' songs have failed 



The Green Mountain State. 



75 



and artists' brushes faltered. Even the camera's sensitive 
vision, while it may reproduce in piecemeal tantalizing sugges- 
. tions of sublime symmetry and enchanting vistas, cannot reveal 
the wider scope and prospect of unfolding beauties that greet 
the admiring eye on every side or the infinite variety of exquisite 
loveliness that lies in color and shade in a land where the velvet 
verdure of the fields vies with forest foliage, beautiful flowers, 
and heaven's own vaulted blue. The scenery of Vermont is not 
of magnificent, awe-inspiring grandeur such as is characteristic 
of some regions in this country where the Titanic upheavals of 
ages gone have reared colossal snow-crowned domes or rived 
gigantic gorges in the impassive rock. Nature was in her gentler 
mood when she fashioned her handiwork here and even sported 
with design in tumbling a profusion of ever changeful pictures 
over the smiling landscape. The scenery is all of the restful, 
pastoral kind, an undulating country of wonderfully verdant fields 
and hillsides, dimpled with tiny ponds or noble lakes, threaded 
by tinkling brooks or busy rivers, and crowned with the glory of 
the mountains. There is in it all such a charm of unspeakable 
harmony, such a wonderful blending of moods grave and gay, 
with such an appealing suggestion of subdued grandeur and 
mighty reserve of power throughout, that the thoughts of care- 
less man who dwells in the midst of it are inspired to a loftier 
and truer beauty sense and a more reverential uplift than he 
dares attempt to express. 

Climate. — The climate of Vermont is not excelled any- 
where in the land in the elements that go to build up strong and 
healthy bodies or that minister to the every-day delights of an 
active or rest-seeking out-door life. There are no climatic 
diseases in Vermont, no regions infested with malaria, and its 
drinking water is pure and plentiful. As has been said before, 
the winters are by no means as severe as has long been repre- 
sented by the misinformed. There is an abundance of snow 
and at times an intensity of cold, but travel is never seriously 
snowbound for any length of time even in the heaviest snowfalls, 
the cold is never a menace to the life of human beings or of cattle, 
and pitiless blizzards and other furious windstorms are never 
experienced, all of which cannot be said for many a part of the 
country popularly supposed to have a far milder climate than 



y() The Green Mountain State. 

this. Vermont winters, in the language of old Adam in "As You 
Like It", are "frosty, but kindly." On the other hand, spring in 
Vermont is a season of marvellous charm when Old Sol and the 
soft airs are wooing the wild flowers from their winter's nap, 
coaxing the song birds back to their familiar haunts, and helping 
Dame Nature weave the wonderful verdure that has made the 
Green Mountain state's hillside and valley famous the wide 
world over. The summers are luxuriant in sunshine and genial 
warmth, but the scorching heat, the suffocating humidity of this 
season so often responsible for a lamentable death list in great 
cities are unknown in this land where even on the hottest days 
and nights gentle breezes bear the balmy breath of forest shade 
over the cooling waters of ponds and streams and rippling in 
wavelets over the tall grasses of the intervening meadows to the 
grateful dwellers in the near-by villages. For here Mother Nature, 
though sometimes stern, is never unkind to her children, and the 
mellow radiance of a genial summer's day blends at twilight into 
cool and comfortable nights that conauce to restful slumber. 
Then comes the autumn, the sweet, dreamy, hazy days when the 
garnered stores of summer's sunshine are reflected in a marvel- 
lously spectacular blaze of tinted foliage on every hillside, when the 
luscious fruits are dropping, the husbandman's crops are gathered, 
and the sumptuous glory of the ripening year revels for a season 
in the indescribable beauty of Indian summer ere King Winter 
sends his frost messengers to herald his chaste dominion over the 
land till spring shall come again. So blends one delightful 
season into another in this snug little commonwealth where 
Nature rewards the simple life with healthful joys that all the 
wealth of the metropolis cannot command. 

As a Winter Resort. — Summer pastimes for the visitor 
to Vermont's green hills are numerous and varied and are too 
obvious to be itemized here. But the winter has its attractions 
for the vacation seeker, too, although the fact has not become so 
generally advertised. To the weary people of the crowded cities 
that would like the experience of sleigh-rides, coasting, toboggan- 
ing, snowshoeing, skating, ice-boating, in the snappy bracing 
air of a genuine Vermont winter, a week-end visit to some com- 
fortable village in the state will afford rare delights that maybe 
have only been read of in story books. But they are very real 



7 he Grcoi Mountain State. 



77 



to Vermonters, nevertheless, and very exhilarating and heakh- 
giving and inspiring as httle stops for breath amid the gayeties 
of the social season in fashion's capitals or the daily rush and 
grind and routine of the place of business. 

Not a Worn-out Resort.— It is only within compara- 
tively recent }ears that the picturesque beauties of X'ermont 
scenery and the manifold attractions of the state as a sunnner 
home or all-the-\ ear-round outiu"- resort have bcijun to be known 





iP^'-^lT 


"^&^ ^^^^-^^ilS 


■p/ ^ .' '^M^^KL- 


:*" ."■.■. . .••^■.» -4-; 





Une vt .Many heauiitul Country Roads. 



to the world outside. For decades the great streams of pleasure- 
seekers have made their way to the sea-shore or to widely 
advertised and exploited points in the interior of the country where 
tourist attractions and accommodations have gradually fallen 
under the control of professional purveyors who have created 
an atmosphere of theatric display or amusement and have literally 
submerged what might once have been the possibilities of restful 
enjoyment of natural charms in the noisy publicity of mighty 
throngs of idlers at a veritable Vanity Fair. To-day. age has 
withered and custom staled the variety of many, if not most, of 



^8 The Green Mountain State. 

these places to the great multitude of sober-minded people. But, 
above and beyond all that, the intelligent vacation-seeker has 
come to realize the better understanding of what rest and recrea- 
tion actually mean and no longer looks for them in the bustle of 
great crowds in an environment of artificial and clamorous 
pastimes. To such people, rural Vermont is a paradise of rest 
and health, of wholesome relaxation and recreation, a dream- 
land of revel in the true luxury of purposeful idling. 

It should be borne in mind that the summer vacation or 
outing business in Vermont has happily not become professional- 
ized in the disagreeable sense already alluded to. The state 
offers abundant opportunity for rest and pleasure-seekers to con- 
sult a wide range of taste and every limitation of purse with the 
assurance that the purely commercialized aspect of the bargain 
has not bred the deceits and snares prevalent in far too many 
other places of resort. There are no great fashionable summer 
hotels in Vermont and no centers thronged with a miscellaneous 
assemblage of floating pleasure chasers. 

Ways to Pass the Summer.— There are many good 
hotels in the state, however, and there are some opportunities, by 
the way, for hotel men of capital and experience to make invest- 
ments in modern hostelries for the accommodation of the fast 
increasing summer business as well as the growing necessities of 
commercial trade incidental to the development of the state's 
industrial life. The man of means who seeks to build or buy 
for his family a permanent summer home in the country wih 
find in Vermont an unlimited variety of locations, each with its 
peculiar charm, and all at prices that have not been boosted into 
an absurdly prohibitive figure by the manipulations of speculators 
or the pressure of demand. There are to be found here and there 
small farms more adapted to make a picturesque summer-home 
estate than to profitable tillage and these are being bought up 
one by one by summer visitors, who sometimes reconstruct the old 
farm-house to suit their fancy or build a new house in its stead. 
Then again in the villages and small cities there are occasional 
mansions delightfully situated for summer-homes that for various 
reasons have been offered for sale and may be obtained at a 
reasonable fisfure. 



The Green Mountain State. 



79 



Vacation-seekers will find ample accommodations in com- 
modious and comfortable farm-houses amid a social environment 
of wholesome self-respect, substantial intelligence, and unpre- 
tentious culture, or they will find opportunities in private 
residences or hotels to enjoy the more varied every-day life of 
cosy little villag^es or thrifty little cities all within a few moments' 
walk of the green fields. 

Others that may desire to improve their season of recreation 
by a more genuine outing, will find comfortable cottages by the 
shores of beautiful lakes and rivers or may pitch their tents in 
the mountain solitudes and enjoy all the delightful experiences 
of "roughing it" within convenient reach of supplies. 

To each and to all of these, the people of Vermont every- 
where extend a most cordial and hearty welcome and deem it 
a privilege to make all such pleasure-seeking visitors at home 
with them in their own social life whenever they are disposed to 
participate in it. The summer visitor is not a target for mer- 
cenary profit hunters in Vermont, but is regarded by the people 
as a guest who brings the novel spirit of the outside world among 
them and who should be hospitably refreshed by the joys of rural 
life in generous return. Vermont people all understand with 
the poet that 

"To those who have been long in city pent, 

'Tis very sweet to look into the fair and open face of heaven." 




8o The Green Mountain State. 

Tercentennial Celebration 

of the Discovery of Lake Champlain 

The three hundredth anniversary of the discovery of Lake 
Champlain will be celebrated in 1909 by the States of Vermont 
and New York and the Dominion of Canada. 

It was on the morning of July 4, 1609, that Samuel de 
Chsmplain discovered this beautiful water. It was an event that 
has had great influence in shaping the history of this country. 

The legislature of Vermont at its biennial session created a 
commission to arrange a fitting celebration. This commission 
was instructed to confer with New York and Canada and secure 
the co-operation of that state and country. New York State has 
appointed a commission and the Dominion of Canada has 
promised to fulfill its part. 

The three commissions will work together for a common 
purpose — to arrange a celebration that will attract the peoi)le of 
the United States and Canada. 

The celebration will begin July 4, 1909, and it is expected 
will continue over a period of two weeks. 

The Vermont commission is composed of 

Governor Fletcher D. Proctor, chairman. Proctor. 

Walter E. Howard, chairman pro tem, Middlebury. 

Horace W. Bailey, Newbury. 

R. VV. McCuen, Vergennes. 

Lvnn M. Hays, secretary, Essex Junction. 

VValter H. Crockett, St. Albans. 

M. D. McMahon, Burlington. 

The New York commission is made up as follows : 

Governor Charles E. Hughes, chairman. New York City. 

Lieut.-Gov. Lewis Stuvvesant Chanier, Tarrytown. 

Henry Wavland Hill, Buffalo. 

John C. N. Taylor, Middletown. 

James W. Wadsworth, Jr., Mt. Morris. 

Alanson T. Dominy, Beekmantown. 

James A. Foley, New York City. 

Frank S. Witherbee, Port Henry. 

Tohn H. Booth, Plattsburg. 
The Canadian commission will be named by Sir Wilfrid 
Laurier. the prime minister. 

France, which country gave to the world the great explorer, 
Samuel de Champlain, will be invited to assist in the celebration. 
Persons and organizations desiring to take part in the cele- 
bration should address the secretary of the Vermont commission. 



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